Finley Designhttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk
UK leading website design agencyTue, 11 Dec 2018 18:19:32 +0000en-GBhourly1Blue Rock Digital – Are you getting original work?https://www.finleydesign.co.uk/blue-rock-digital-are-you-getting-original-work/
Wed, 02 Sep 2015 11:30:20 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=11870Can you be sure you are getting original web design and content??, sadly it came to my attention recently when we were approached by Blue Rock Digital of Swindon and Penryn, who emailed me to see if I was interested in their new white label web design service. What amazed me was the content of their

]]>Can you be sure you are getting original web design and content??, sadly it came to my attention recently when we were approached by Blue Rock Digital of Swindon and Penryn, who emailed me to see if I was interested in their new white label web design service. What amazed me was the content of their email marketing had been copied from our very own website.

They were using our marketing material to advertise to ourselves! Now firstly of course my first thought was just how a company could be stupid enough to rip off our content and then send us the very evidence of what they were doing!, but then secondly the concern in my opinion is of Blue Rock Digital themselves, the reasons is, the industry we are in requires design, innovation, concepts and quite frankly brain power, so the question that springs to mind, if you would consider using Blue Rock Digital, would you be getting original work or just copied work?

They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, however in this industry I disagree, we are in the business of delivering cutting edge, innovative website design, we need to be experts at our own marketing in order to provide you with the website which will work, if Blue Rock Digital can’t even come up with their own advertising, and have to resort to copying more successful companies, then you would have to seriously consider are they right for you, in my humble opinion.

plagiarism

ˈpleɪdʒərɪz(ə)m/

noun

noun: plagiarism; plural noun: plagiarisms

the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.

UPDATE – They employ school children to do their marketing, when I approached their MD to clarify their position, he said they have a boy from school who was doing their marketing and it was his fault, I asked for the name of the school and guess what “silence”!! Speaks volumes doesn’t it

]]>Funny Customer Complaintshttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk/funny-customer-complaints/
Wed, 27 May 2015 07:59:42 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=11861THESE ARE ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY “THOMAS COOK VACATIONS” FROM DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS: 1. “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.” 2. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t

]]>THESE ARE ACTUAL COMPLAINTS RECEIVED BY “THOMAS COOK VACATIONS” FROM DISSATISFIED CUSTOMERS:

1. “They should not allow topless sunbathing on the beach. It was very distracting for my husband who just wanted to relax.”

2. “On my holiday to Goa in India, I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don’t like spicy food.”

3. “We went on holiday to Spain and had a problem with the taxi drivers as they were all Spanish.”

4. “We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our own swimsuits and towels. We assumed it would be included in the price.”

5. “The beach was too sandy. We had to clean everything when we returned to our room.”

6. “We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as white but it was more yellow.”

7. “It’s lazy of the local shopkeepers in Puerto Vallartato close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during ‘siesta’ time — this should be banned.”

8. “No-one told us there would be fish in the water. The children were scared.”

9. “Although the brochure said that there was a fully equipped kitchen, there was no egg-slicer in the drawers.”

10. “I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local convenience store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts.”

11. “The roads were uneven and bumpy, so we could not read the local guide book during the bus ride to the resort. Because of this, we were unaware of many things that would have made our holiday more fun.”

12. “It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England. It took the Americans only three hours to get home. This seems unfair.”

14. “The brochure stated: ‘No hairdressers at the resort.’ We’re trainee hairdressers and we think they knew and made us wait longer for service.”

15. “When we were in Spain, there were too many Spanish people there. The receptionist spoke Spanish, the food was Spanish. No one told us that there would be so many foreigners.”

16. “We had to line up outside to catch the boat and there was no air-conditioning.”

17. “It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel.”

18. “I was bitten by a mosquito. The brochure did not mention mosquitoes.”

19. “My fiancée and I requested twin-beds when we booked, but instead we were placed in a room with a king bed. We now hold you responsible and want to be re-reimbursed for the fact that I became pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked.”

]]>Conversion strategies for Ecommerce Managershttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk/conversion-strategies-ecommerce-managers/
Wed, 10 Dec 2014 19:11:10 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=9349With Christmas just round the corner, Its the perfect time to increase sales, so we have put together strategies for you to improve your conversions this Christmas. Getting your web visitors to turn into buyers is always at the top of the list of objectives for any Ecommerce Manager or company. You might be surprised

]]>With Christmas just round the corner, Its the perfect time to increase sales, so we have put together strategies for you to improve your conversions this Christmas.

Getting your web visitors to turn into buyers is always at the top of the list of objectives for any Ecommerce Manager or company. You might be surprised to learn the conversion rates currently sit around the 4% mark, even for some of the biggest online stores out there, so trying to achieve high conversion rates is going to be a challenge, but one we hope we can help you with.

Make your checkout simple

A high number of whats known as “abandon basket” issues are created by over complicated checkout processes, or too many things for customers to have to complete in order to just simply buy your products.

One of the key steps first is NEVER insist clients have to register to purchase, although in principle this might seem a good idea in order to collect data etc, but again this can only serve as another hurdle for customers to jump before simply buying. Offer guest or register checkout process, you will find this improves you potential basket abandonment, and remember even if they purchase as a guest, you still get all the customer details anyway.

Keep the page process simple, clean and easy to navigate, once added to the basket there is a simple process to follow, the client views the basket, click on place order, completes their own details and is taken to the payment page, simple clean and quick, try to avoid jumping from Billing address to delivery address pages, try and keep these on the same page for simple one page navigation.

Remember its been reported that 44% of UK shoppers have abandoned their purchase due to overly complex checkout process.

Complex Navigation

Of course you want to offer all things to all men, as they say, but you need to concentrate on the bigger picture and take a helicopter view of your product range and pages. With many sites using multiple categories and products sometimes we can lose track of what our customer sees, or we simply expect them to view very page and every product as we feel.

In practical senses this isn’t true, think supermarket strategy, you need to bring to the forefront the key elements you wish to push, believing that every web customer will browse as you think they will, tends to make you push to try and display every part of your website to every user, a simple more overall approach, creating a useful yet simple journey will mean customers get to the right product fast and conveniently.

]]>Are you going over the top with Social Mediahttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk/going-top-social-media/
Mon, 10 Nov 2014 19:31:06 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=11669The biggest dilemma which faces most small and new businesses is the getting bogged down with the whole social media marketing with really little marketing strategy or understanding what is best or even what might work for your business. Every business is different The first mistake is getting the feeling that you have to be

]]>The biggest dilemma which faces most small and new businesses is the getting bogged down with the whole social media marketing with really little marketing strategy or understanding what is best or even what might work for your business.

Every business is different

The first mistake is getting the feeling that you have to be active and a part of every social media platform or you will lose out, when in reality you could end up doing your business more harm then good trying to keep up to date with every platform out there.

The key is to understand your audience, if you’re in Recruitment i’m not sure you are going to land your latest candidate on Facebook, or a Car garage promoting MOT’s, Pinterest is hardly your customer base, but many business fall into the on going trap that they need to be involved in every platform incase they miss out.

Understand your audience

By taking the time to taking a step back and really looking at your customer base, but more importantly look at how they interact with social media, a perfect example is to take the Beauty Therapist, so what’s the best social platform?, well first on the list should be Facebook, and why? well your customers are the sort of customers that will promote not only you, but your results, how many times have you seen Facebook posts regarding the latest nail style or bragging on the latest facial they just got, it’s female marketing and it’s a perfect platform for that type of industry to tap into.

And if you want to make a major splash on marketing on Facebook, start a Like campaign, simply offer a FREE treatment in return for likes and watch the Facebook likes go through the roof, its a sure way to get thing really moving in your social media.

Narrow down your platforms

Once you have really managed to understand your customers it’s time to start choosing your platforms and don’t forget it’s actually ok to not use every platform out there, if you’re an engineering company, are you really going to find potential clients on Facebook or Pinterest.

Narrow things down to your core audience and keep things simple, otherwise you will end up spending more time on social media then your business.

]]>Magento Go and Prostores to closehttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk/magento-go-prostores-close/
Tue, 08 Jul 2014 13:50:12 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=10501So the inevitable is going to happen, Ebay owned Magento will be closing Magento Go and Prostores come 1st February 2015 leaving thousands of small to medium sized companies looking for options. When it was announced back in 2011 Ebay had acquired Magento, we all kind of saw what was on the cards, I suppose

]]>So the inevitable is going to happen, Ebay owned Magento will be closing Magento Go and Prostores come 1st February 2015 leaving thousands of small to medium sized companies looking for options. When it was announced back in 2011 Ebay had acquired Magento, we all kind of saw what was on the cards, I suppose it comes from that old business saying, if you can’t beat them, buy them! and now Ebay had taken the decision to close this aspect of the business down.

So what can Ecommerce clients do, well we took the descision some time ago to avoid Magento as a platform, don’t get me wrong it’s very powerful in the right hands, however more and more small businesses were falling foul to think that if they invested thousands into this platform that they would be just like the big boys.

Instead we focused on delivering Ecommerce website solutions which were not only easy for our clients to control but also had so many built in and optional features that it stood side by side to Magento without having to mortgage to costs.

Also don’t despair, as moving from Magento Go to our Ecommerce platform is simple, get in touch now before its too late

]]>Google Apps – Perfect for small businesseshttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk/google-apps-perfect-small-businesses/
Wed, 13 Nov 2013 11:59:04 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=8903So this week we took the decision to transfer all our emails etc over to Google Apps, and since then it has been an eye opener just how good Google Apps for business is for any small business or startup. As with any small business or startup, IT is paramount to running an efficient business

]]>So this week we took the decision to transfer all our emails etc over to Google Apps, and since then it has been an eye opener just how good Google Apps for business is for any small business or startup.

As with any small business or startup, IT is paramount to running an efficient business and we were finding it tricky with so many different types of software to deal with emails, storage, social media and much more, that we really needed to bring everything together into one solution.

So spurred on by our dated email solution we took the plunge and paid to join the Google Apps for business. At first having to pay for anything like email solutions makes you think, Google Apps charge £3.30 per user per month, or you can opt to pay £33 per year, but for what you get in efficiency and an overall solution this amount is a steel.

First off, if your not using it already, the Google Chrome browser is not only slick but will enhance your Google Apps service, it allows you to use all the Google apps services much quicker as well as having some neat features thrown in on things like gmail.

Googles Gmail Email Solution

One of the biggest issues we faced was the shear number of devices we had needing email to be synced. We were always having issues with pop3 accounts, emails showing as read when they hadn’t been.

But Gmail has none of these issues, its slick, its available on all devices and it remains synced. One of the other little benefits is when sending an email from our iPhones, it picks the normal signature that we use with our standard emails, so no more “sent from my iPhone” it now send professional looking emails without anyone knowing where they have come from.

Gmails email solution is beautiful, its simple, its so easy to control filters, and what we have found hugely useful is the direct contact that can be made with so many of our colleagues, we can add any one to our Google+ circles and more, all directly within the email client.

Google Drive

With Google drive now storing, working or editing documents is a piece of cake. You get 30GB of storage within the package and the ability to buy more if you need. But what stood out was the great way you can edit online all those office documents, you can invite colleagues to edit the same documents and so much more.

Drive is a great way to keep all your business documents in one place and accessible from anywhere.

]]>Why online shops and retail shops should be the samehttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk/why-online-shops-and-retail-shops-should-be-the-same/
Wed, 21 Nov 2012 11:56:43 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=6983One of the key tricks to having a successful online shop is to start thinking like a normal shop. When we start to look at the traditional methods used in modern retailing, the same principle can be applied to your online shop in order to offer customers what they want. Remember the times before online

]]>One of the key tricks to having a successful online shop is to start thinking like a normal shop. When we start to look at the traditional methods used in modern retailing, the same principle can be applied to your online shop in order to offer customers what they want.

Remember the times before online shops and Ecommerce, we all shopped in the normal way from actually walking in to high street retailers or ordering from catalogue based companies, well now Ecommerce has changed the way customers can buy, but the principle on how you make your Ecommerce succeed means you should go back to the routes of traditional retailing.

Shop Window Display = Home Page

Your online shops home page is your shops window, and going back to traditional retailing it was all about visual attraction, displays which showed current offers, enticed customers to walk in and browse further.

So start thinking about your Ecommerce shop window and how important it is to set the first impression, home pages need to be clean & fresh (you wouldn’t have dirty windows in a normal shop) with simple to see product, offers and other important information to make your customer want to come in and browse your online shop.

You wouldn’t fill your shop window with 100’s of products, so the same principle applies online, highlight your features products, outline the service you offer and shout about the offers that await your sites visitors who enter your shop.

Shops Staff = Contact Us, Info Pages & Support

For years, many retailers have built their reputation on the expertise and helpfulness of the staff, customers want to feel loved and important, and that face to face level of customer service has been for many years paramount to peoples buying decisions, and with your online shop you need to adopt the same attitude.

One of the largest objections online customers face is a level of trust, you need to make sure that your ecommerce store offers a fail safe product and sales support system that lets people know you are there to help. Don’t just rely upon a simple “contact us”, if a customer is in your shop (online) then you need to get the message across that they are in safe hands.

Offer a number of ways to be able to contact you, offer assurances that you will deliver on promises like getting back to them, or how simple you online store is to use.

In a high street shop, if you need help or advise you go to the person behind the counter, this is easy, as its the chap behind the counter! but online you need to make the process as transparent as possible. If you offer a number of different contact options, then back up the process with why you offer this, is it to make dealing with their enquiry quicker, or so they can speak to the right person without waiting days for a response.

Stacked Shelves = Products Catalogue Pages

Go to any high street shop and would you ever expect to see a pile of products all jumbled up across the store, no the products are grouped into their categories, they are displayed neatly in rows and columns, specials are displayed in the more prominent position of the store, and its clear to see what products are on offer with clear ticketing price displays.

So don;t make your customers guess with your online store, keep click through’s to a minimum with well thought out category structures that display the most useful range of products at any one time. Try to avoid complex and lengthy routes to specific or specialist ranges, to get this strcuture right, think about how a customer may feel if they walked into a high street shop looking for a kettle and had to:

Please go into that room with the door that says “Electrical Products” once inside that room, look for a door which say “Small Appliances” and go into that room, once in that room look for a door which says “Kettles” and go in to that room! by this point I think you would agree any customer would just give up, so the same principle applys online, make the journey as simple as possible

Product Display = Product Display

In exactly the same way you would expect to see a product display in a high street shop, the same principle and method should be used online. I’m sure you have experienced the standing and staring at a product you like the look at but have no idea the price, or does it come in silver, theres no salesman around so you just don’t bother.

Online retailing offers a much more easier way to display and provide considerably more product detail then a high street shop, and any Ecommerce store should utilise this to its maximum. If you have your online customer this far in the process its now you need to give them what they want.

Provide a uniformed look across all products, make sure all images are the same size, the price is always clearly indicated and double check theres no possible confusion to, does the product include VAT or not, can I get this shopped next day, what colours does it come in. The major benefit online shops have is the ability to capitalise on the product page by providing extremely useful and detail information, much more then a high street retailer could do, so take advantage of this.

When someone is staring at your product online, your page is your salesmans, provide compelling product descriptions, chances are the customer has just come from 2 or 3 other online stores looking for a certain product, so don’t just hand them the same manufacturers description as every one else, provide a good descriptive paragraph that becomes your sale pitch to the customer.

Taking the product home = Courier Delivery

Ok this is one of the major differences between online store and high street stores, but to get this right you still need to follow the principle behind how high street retailers provide this.

Its often said, people like to buy in a physical shop, as they want to take the product home there and then, so its about convenience, getting over this, Ecommerce companies need to think and look hard about how to make the whole online process of the customer getting the goods, as convenient and as less painful for the consumer, if you ship goods to other addresses then home, then make this clear on your site as much as possible, this will give consumers the confidence that they will not have to have someone sit at home waiting for the parcel.

If you only ship to home addresses then you need to work a little harder in making this convenient, although most people like the 24 hour delivery method, consider the customer who wants it on a specific day, make this easy a process as possible for the customer. Consider if a customer walked into a high street shop and was told they can buy this but can only take it away at some point tomorrow or in the next 48 hours then they would be put off and probably not buy, so with online its making sure the process from buying the product to the customer actually getting the product as painless as possible.

Ecommerce sales in the UK are reported to continue to rise, so if you want to make sure you have your slice of this increase in sales then start thinking like a high street retailer and offer the best ecommerce experience you can.

Discover the social marketing mistakes small businesses need to avoid for better marketing

For any small business a productive marketing plan is a great and cheap way to promote your business, but get to wrong and you could alienate more people then gain.

Avoid self promotion

Of course we don’t mean you should not promote your company but the nature and wording you use is important to avoid turning people away.

In real terms, no customer cares if you have just “made a sale” so avoid telling people how much money you have just made, it doesn’t benefit any of your customers so why should they care, you don’t check out Tescos latest sales reports before buying your monthly food shopping! instead let people know what you can offer them and why it may benefit them, provide useful content, create posts that offer useful insights into your product range or services.

Promote the benefits not your features

This piece of advise goes back to the dawn of any sales training and is still something that should be followed in digital marketing today.

Remember the saying “people don’t by features, they buy benefits” and this is true in your social marketing, tailor your tweets or blog posts to highlight the benefits of your products or service and avoid trying to tell everyone about what you do, tell them how your service or product will benefit them and they will listen.

Avoid pointless waffle

Many small businesses under estimate what they say in social marketing, their approach is often one of, tweeting something is better then nothing.

But this is a sure way to start getting people to unfollow you, people tend to react to much more infrequent yet useful information then endless tweets about what the web owner may have had for lunch or what they saw out the office window. although there is quite a benefit to coming across as human and not always about company promotion getting the level right will eventually start getting reactions rather then simply bored followers.

A simple way to test what your about to tweet, blog or upload a link to be liked, we call the “pub test”, basically before you press that send button, think about what you have just typed and then think what reaction you would get saying exactly the same thing to your mates down the pub, would they listen or start looking around for anyone else to listen too.

Small business owners need to start using social media as a firm of networking rather then a pure sales tool, get the balance right and your social marketing will start to take off naturally.

Your not actually friends with the famous

There seems to be a new pattern emerging where a small business will name drop and @someone famous in a number of tweets, but don’t forget everyone can see what your up to.

Every time you tweet a famous person in the hope you think they will either reply, retweet or that you are now their new best friend, your simply showing every other follower of you that your desperate for someone to listen and in turn your reputation can start taking a knock.

Make sure you brand all your social marketing

Every small business should know just how important your image online is to your business, getting your web design right is first, but now you need to get your social media pages looking right.

It’s even easier now to upload and change your Twitter and Facebook background, avatar and header images, but don’t scrimp on this, often you can ave more people looking at your twitter avatar on any given day ten your website.

So brand yourself, match your website style to your social media pages, upload proper sized header images and backgrounds, poor images or images that look cheap reflect on you and your small business quality of service.

Check out our header design service if you want to improve your social media impact.

]]>Can’t upload a twitter background?https://www.finleydesign.co.uk/cant-upload-a-twitter-background/
Tue, 06 Nov 2012 13:46:24 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=5787There has been a number of problems reported across the web where people can’t seem to upload a new background image to their twitter page. Well now just follow these simple steps and it will work!! 1. Log into the admin area of your twitter account Log in to your twitter account as usual, and

]]>There has been a number of problems reported across the web where people can’t seem to upload a new background image to their twitter page. Well now just follow these simple steps and it will work!!

1. Log into the admin area of your twitter account

Log in to your twitter account as usual, and click on the top right settings icon and click on the “edit profile” option

2. Click on Design

Click on the design section of the menu on the left hand side. Then choose one of the standard theme colours and click on “Save Settings”

3. Upload your new background image

Now while still on the same page, first you need to clear your browser cache etc, by using Ctrl + F5 or what ever method your browser uses. Now click on change background and select the image you want to use.

Now you will need to ignore the text which says “See your changes instantly” as you won’t! You will still see the same background image you selected. Now click on “Save Changes” and again you will probably see no change and it will appear to have done nothing.

4. Go to home page

Now click on home page and see if your background has now changed, if not repeat the clearing browser cache etc as per step 3 and you should see your brand new background image.

]]>Next Generation Website Designhttps://www.finleydesign.co.uk/next-generation-website-design/
Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:35:54 +0000http://www.finleydesign.co.uk/?p=5053How small businesses can benefit from a next generation website With the internet now becoming the number one source for customers browsing for products or services, the demand and expectation for new and fresh content online is now a real issue that needs to be addressed by small businesses wishing to keep up with trends.

With the internet now becoming the number one source for customers browsing for products or services, the demand and expectation for new and fresh content online is now a real issue that needs to be addressed by small businesses wishing to keep up with trends.

Over the last few years the trend in websites has moved towards more dynamic websites with more and more content being added on a regular basis.

Integrating social media and the use of social marketing is also another key way to promoting small businesses online and engaging with your customers.

To keep any small business up to date and to offer your customer what they expect, small businesses can now benefit hugely from using a next generation website design and all the features it brings, and any company still relying upon an old out of date web design will start to fall behind.

How a next generation website design can save you money
Although many small business may be put off with the initial cost (a cost which is often thought to be much higher then it truely is) in the long wrong the damage an old website can do can be huge.

Next generation websites now allow you, the business owner, to be in control of the websites content and produce fresh regular information your customers expect. The new style CMS (content managed system) website designs offer a mass of new and useful features that not only allow for better web design and user experience, but give you the business a back end access to its content, so you can edit, add and delete the websites content when and wherever you are, all you need is a CMS website which you can access from any web browser.

Adding pages and content through a CMS system
Being able to add, edit and delete content is one the main benefits of the next generation websites. With the same type of edit screens you can find in software like Microsoft Word, you can control the content and make changes as you go.

You can add as many pages, posts or products as you want, and the more the better. Most CMS solutions will allow you to keep all your content in order and categorised into different departments, which everytime you publish will automatically update the websites content.

Helping you rank higher on search engines
As CMS next generation websites are much more based around fresh content, a typical CMS website will rank better.

Over the last year there has been some major changes in how Google and other search engines read website with a major empthasis on content, content is king is now the buzz words of web design.

With a next generation website, the structure of the website also allows for better control over SEO, with easier options to change page titles, page meta content and well styled web page layouts, soon you will start to see improvements on your search listings, while older websites will start to drop off the lists.

Improving the customer journey
As next generation websites are designed in a much cleaner and more dynamic way, your customers online journey improves.

With less need to have thousands of hand written pages, CMS websites allow you to post single paged information to a number of categories and sub categories without having to repeat yourself. Dynamic websites work on a back office database which displays the content to the customer when needed.

A more uniformed approach to the websites design keeps the look consistent and therefore easier for your customer to navigate, easier navigation means a more engaged customer.

With improved featured, like built in contact forms, pricing tables or form based enquiry forms, you will notice a much hhigher conversion response from potential clients.

Why not discuss the cost involved in updating your old website to a CMS website design, you may be surprised at just how cost effective it can be